


Presence

by paragonGamer



Category: House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski
Genre: Gen, Horror, POV Second Person, general creepiness not covered by archive warnings, slight interface screw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-05-31 00:31:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6448231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paragonGamer/pseuds/paragonGamer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You don't really think that, when you pick up the book, that it's going to be all that scary. Sure, it has been praised as one of the scariest out there, but how bad can it be?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Presence

  
You don't really think that, when you pick up the book, that it's going to be all that scary. Sure, it has been praised as one of the scariest out there, but how bad can it be? 

 

Then, when you go to sleep that night, the pages whisper to you in your dreams, the hidden monsters within crawling into your mind through your ears and scraping the walls clean so that your unearthed paranoia will finally rise up in the morning, your heart pounding but you don't know why. You didn't dream.

 

You read it again, looking, looking, looking for the reason you woke up covered in sweat from a dreamless sleep. It's weird, you realize, that the kitchen radio only plays static during breakfast. It didn't before. You go into another room with the book and then the static clears up again.

 

"Focus only on the pages"

Yeah, right. But you can't move your head, and the hairs on the back of your neck rise, and the faint warmth of breath caresses the skin on your back. Once you finish that part, however, the feeling goes away.

 

 

The darkness awaits you that night, and in your dreams you see something black as oil raise a scraggly claw and it swings at _**you**_

 

You wake up and remember nothing.

Nothing at all.

Fucking hell.

 

You start seeing things, or you think you do, out of the

corner of your eyes, waiting there in the darker parts of the street,

corners of rooms, underneath

furniture.

When you first get a good glimpse at the thing, before it runs away again, you nearly scream. You bite your tongue hard, so hard it bleeds, and you have to go to the hospital once your friend notices the blood dribbling down your chin.

Thankfully, you don't need surgery.


End file.
